Around the World in Eighty Days

Chapter XXVII

In which Passepartout undergoes, at a speed of twenty miles an hour, a
course of Mormon history

During the night of the 5th of December, the train ran
south-easterly for about fifty miles; then rose an equal distance in a
north-easterly direction, towards the Great Salt Lake.

Passepartout, about nine o’clock, went out upon the platform to take the
air. The weather was cold, the heavens grey, but it was not snowing. The
sun’s disc, enlarged by the mist, seemed an enormous ring of gold, and
Passepartout was amusing himself by calculating its value in pounds
sterling, when he was diverted from this interesting study by a
strange-looking personage who made his appearance on the platform.

This personage, who had taken the train at Elko, was tall and dark, with
black moustache, black stockings, a black silk hat, a black waistcoat,
black trousers, a white cravat, and dogskin gloves. He might have been
taken for a clergyman. He went from one end of the train to the other,
and affixed to the door of each car a notice written in manuscript.

Passepartout approached and read one of these notices, which stated that
Elder William Hitch, Mormon missionary, taking advantage of his presence
on train No. 48, would deliver a lecture on Mormonism in car No. 117,
from eleven to twelve o’clock; and that he invited all who were desirous
of being instructed concerning the mysteries of the religion of the
“Latter Day Saints” to attend.

“I’ll go,” said Passepartout to himself. He knew nothing of Mormonism
except the custom of polygamy, which is its foundation.

The news quickly spread through the train, which contained about one
hundred passengers, thirty of whom, at most, attracted by the notice,
ensconced themselves in car No. 117. Passepartout took one of the front
seats. Neither Mr. Fogg nor Fix cared to attend.

At the appointed hour Elder William Hitch rose, and, in an irritated
voice, as if he had already been contradicted, said, “I tell you that Joe
Smith is a martyr, that his brother Hiram is a martyr, and that the
persecutions of the United States Government against the prophets will
also make a martyr of Brigham Young. Who dares to say the contrary?”

No one ventured to gainsay the missionary, whose excited tone contrasted
curiously with his naturally calm visage. No doubt his anger arose from
the hardships to which the Mormons were actually subjected. The
government had just succeeded, with some difficulty, in reducing these
independent fanatics to its rule. It had made itself master of Utah, and
subjected that territory to the laws of the Union, after imprisoning
Brigham Young on a charge of rebellion and polygamy. The disciples of the
prophet had since redoubled their efforts, and resisted, by words at
least, the authority of Congress. Elder Hitch, as is seen, was trying to
make proselytes on the very railway trains.

Then, emphasising his words with his loud voice and frequent gestures, he
related the history of the Mormons from Biblical times: how that, in
Israel, a Mormon prophet of the tribe of Joseph published the annals of
the new religion, and bequeathed them to his son Mormon; how, many
centuries later, a translation of this precious book, which was written
in Egyptian, was made by Joseph Smith, junior, a Vermont farmer, who
revealed himself as a mystical prophet in 1825; and how, in short, the
celestial messenger appeared to him in an illuminated forest, and gave
him the annals of the Lord.

Several of the audience, not being much interested in the missionary’s
narrative, here left the car; but Elder Hitch, continuing his lecture,
related how Smith, junior, with his father, two brothers, and a few
disciples, founded the church of the “Latter Day Saints,” which, adopted
not only in America, but in England, Norway and Sweden, and Germany,
counts many artisans, as well as men engaged in the liberal professions,
among its members; how a colony was established in Ohio, a temple erected
there at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, and a town built at
Kirkland; how Smith became an enterprising banker, and received from a
simple mummy showman a papyrus scroll written by Abraham and several
famous Egyptians.

The Elder’s story became somewhat wearisome, and his audience grew
gradually less, until it was reduced to twenty passengers. But this did
not disconcert the enthusiast, who proceeded with the story of Joseph
Smith’s bankruptcy in 1837, and how his ruined creditors gave him a coat
of tar and feathers; his reappearance some years afterwards, more
honourable and honoured than ever, at Independence, Missouri, the chief
of a flourishing colony of three thousand disciples, and his pursuit
thence by outraged Gentiles, and retirement into the Far West.

Ten hearers only were now left, among them honest Passepartout, who was
listening with all his ears. Thus he learned that, after long
persecutions, Smith reappeared in Illinois, and in 1839 founded a
community at Nauvoo, on the Mississippi, numbering twenty-five thousand
souls, of which he became mayor, chief justice, and general-in-chief;
that he announced himself, in 1843, as a candidate for the Presidency of
the United States; and that finally, being drawn into ambuscade at
Carthage, he was thrown into prison, and assassinated by a band of men
disguised in masks.

Passepartout was now the only person left in the car, and the Elder,
looking him full in the face, reminded him that, two years after the
assassination of Joseph Smith, the inspired prophet, Brigham Young, his
successor, left Nauvoo for the banks of the Great Salt Lake, where, in
the midst of that fertile region, directly on the route of the emigrants
who crossed Utah on their way to California, the new colony, thanks to
the polygamy practised by the Mormons, had flourished beyond
expectations.

“And you, my brother!”

“And this,” added Elder William Hitch, “this is why the jealousy of
Congress has been aroused against us! Why have the soldiers of the Union
invaded the soil of Utah? Why has Brigham Young, our chief, been
imprisoned, in contempt of all justice? Shall we yield to force? Never!
Driven from Vermont, driven from Illinois, driven from Ohio, driven from
Missouri, driven from Utah, we shall yet find some independent territory
on which to plant our tents. And you, my brother,” continued the Elder,
fixing his angry eyes upon his single auditor, “will you not plant yours
there, too, under the shadow of our flag?”

“No!” replied Passepartout courageously, in his turn retiring from the
car, and leaving the Elder to preach to vacancy.

A superb sheet of water!

During the lecture the train had been making good progress, and towards
half-past twelve it reached the northwest border of the Great Salt Lake.
Thence the passengers could observe the vast extent of this interior sea,
which is also called the Dead Sea, and into which flows an American
Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse, framed in lofty crags in large
strata, encrusted with white salt—a superb sheet of water, which was
formerly of larger extent than now, its shores having encroached with the
lapse of time, and thus at once reduced its breadth and increased its
depth.

The Salt Lake, seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, is situated three
miles eight hundred feet above the sea. Quite different from Lake
Asphaltite, whose depression is twelve hundred feet below the sea, it
contains considerable salt, and one quarter of the weight of its water is
solid matter, its specific weight being 1,170, and, after being
distilled, 1,000. Fishes are, of course, unable to live in it, and those
which descend through the Jordan, the Weber, and other streams soon
perish.

The country around the lake was well cultivated, for the Mormons are
mostly farmers; while ranches and pens for domesticated animals, fields
of wheat, corn, and other cereals, luxuriant prairies, hedges of wild
rose, clumps of acacias and milk-wort, would have been seen six months
later. Now the ground was covered with a thin powdering of snow.

The train reached Ogden at two o’clock, where it rested for six hours,
Mr. Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City,
connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours in this
strikingly American town, built on the pattern of other cities of the
Union, like a checker-board, “with the sombre sadness of right-angles,”
as Victor Hugo expresses it. The founder of the City of the Saints could
not escape from the taste for symmetry which distinguishes the
Anglo-Saxons. In this strange country, where the people are certainly not
up to the level of their institutions, everything is done
“squarely”—cities, houses, and follies.

The travellers, then, were promenading, at three o’clock, about the
streets of the town built between the banks of the Jordan and the spurs
of the Wahsatch Range. They saw few or no churches, but the prophet’s
mansion, the court-house, and the arsenal, blue-brick houses with
verandas and porches, surrounded by gardens bordered with acacias, palms,
and locusts. A clay and pebble wall, built in 1853, surrounded the town;
and in the principal street were the market and several hotels adorned
with pavilions. The place did not seem thickly populated. The streets
were almost deserted, except in the vicinity of the temple, which they
only reached after having traversed several quarters surrounded by
palisades. There were many women, which was easily accounted for by the
“peculiar institution” of the Mormons; but it must not be supposed that
all the Mormons are polygamists. They are free to marry or not, as they
please; but it is worth noting that it is mainly the female citizens of
Utah who are anxious to marry, as, according to the Mormon religion,
maiden ladies are not admitted to the possession of its highest joys.
These poor creatures seemed to be neither well off nor happy. Some—the
more well-to-do, no doubt—wore short, open, black silk dresses, under a
hood or modest shawl; others were habited in Indian fashion.

Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women,
charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon. His
common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him a terrible
thing to have to guide so many wives at once across the vicissitudes of
life, and to conduct them, as it were, in a body to the Mormon paradise
with the prospect of seeing them in the company of the glorious Smith,
who doubtless was the chief ornament of that delightful place, to all
eternity. He felt decidedly repelled from such a vocation, and he
imagined—perhaps he was mistaken—that the fair ones of Salt Lake City
cast rather alarming glances on his person. Happily, his stay there was
but brief. At four the party found themselves again at the station, took
their places in the train, and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at
the moment, however, that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of
“Stop! stop!” were heard.

Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman who uttered
the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was breathless with running.
Happily for him, the station had neither gates nor barriers. He rushed
along the track, jumped on the rear platform of the train, and fell,
exhausted, into one of the seats.

Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast,
approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight
after an unpleasant domestic scene.

When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured to ask
him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner in which he had
decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.

“One, sir,” replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward—“one, and
that was enough!”